It must feel funny. He's sitting in a sparsely furnished office upstairs from the under-construction music venue, The Local -- the long-awaited, latest location for the all-ages club he started playing in at 14, long before he and his bandmates knew they'd be touring the world with punk music and playing alongside bands they'd only heard on the radio.

Diener ("It's spelled like 'die nerd' without the 'd'-- yes, I've thought about that," he says) was volunteering his time to help resurrect the former music venue during the last effort. And now, after having toured the country and the world, in the three months he has before he goes back on buses and planes, he's ready to pick up the paint brush again.

It might not be the kind of behavior you'd expect from a guy who's played in front of a crowd of 10,0000 a hemisphere away -- or maybe it is.

Diener and the other members of The Swellers insist, despite the nation- and worldwide tours, that they haven't yet "made it."

It's hard to believe, but they won't let you convince them otherwise. Bring up the fact that they played on the Warped Tour in 2009, and Jonathan is quick to point out what it's like for a band still trying to make their name known to larger audiences.

"It was a lot of work. We had to sell $700 in merch (merchandise) a day just to pay for our tour bus fee every day. ... It's 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. work, and it's just yelling at kids to buy all your stuff, so it's more work than, 'Oh, this is fun,'" he says.

"There has to be something more," adds Nick Diener, lead singer, guitarist, and Jonathan's older brother. "I think our band is at our highest-level popularity. I think we’re at this point where we’re stopping and recollecting."

You could say they've earned a break. Since forming 10 years ago when Jonathan and Nick started jamming with friends and playing at the Local, they've had multiple nationwide tours, have toured Europe twice and on their most recent played shows in Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia.

"So now we’re actually considered a global band, which is bizarre," Jonathan Diener, A.K.A. Jono, laughs. "Because we’re just four smelly dudes who show up and are like, wow there’s a lot of people here. It’s pretty awesome."

Guitar player Ryan Collins, a more recent addition to the band (the Diener brothers are the only original members) echoed those thoughts. The band spends about nine months out of the year touring, and when he's home, Collins cooks pizzas at a local restaurant his friend owns.

He said he does it because he gets bored when they're not playing -- but the money is still nice.

"In our our eyes we're like, we could do better. It pretty much is a career to us, but we’d like more of a more substantial income (laughs). That'd be nice."

Jonathan Diener describes The Swellers's music as "melodic, accessible punk rock." Putting those words together -- especially "accessible" and "punk" -- might seem like selling out to punk purists, but Jonathan says the band doesn't buy into that mentality.

"A lot of people have, it's like a punk rock guilt, that's a good way to put it, where they're so afraid of multiple types of people liking them, and they try their hardest to isolate that. And to me, you only live once, so why not, you know, do what you can?" he said.

"We did a tour with Paramore, and then we did a tour with Less than Jake, this big ska band, and then The Casualties, which is this big street punk band with crazy mohawks, and that's in a row. So a lot of people would be afraid of doing one or the other, we try everything. I guess the main goal is to get as many people to listen to us as we can, without compromising who we are as a band."

So what's next for The Swellers?

Flint.

The band is playing a free show at Woobie's Bar in Flint March 31, a venue they're familiar with. They had hoped to play the Local, but construction isn't expected to end until sometime in April.

"We literally learned everything we know about playing a show, setting up a stage, and just performing at the Local. We learned all of that in Flint," Nick Diener says.

The new Local is under the umbrella of Red Ink Flint. Jonathan Diener was recently among a group of former Local-goers who met up with Joel Rash, who's spearheading the Red Ink Flint effort, to talk about where and how to build the stage. He said he's ready to pick up the paint brush and get back to work. That is, until they're back on tour.

Nick Diener said the band is focusing on being themselves and playing the kind of music they want to play. Collins said it's impossible to say if this will be the last year he ever cooks a pizza, but maybe it doesn't matter.

"At this point, we all love it and there’s nothing going to stop it, but it's different these days, being musicians," he said. "Sometimes I do wonder. I’m getting old, what am I doing? But other times I'm like, this is awesome. I’m halfway around the world playing guitar. This is awesome."